Pregnant and Rejected, Now She’s Back! のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 50

SETH POV I pulled up to Darius’s house at exactly three in the afternoon, the time Brynn had texted me to come pick her up for a supply run back to the hotel. The house looked exactly like I’d expected it to, all clean lines and expensive landscaping, the kind of place that screamed old money and new power in equal measure. I hated it on principle. Hated that Brynn was inside it, hated that she’d been staying here for over a week now, hated most of all that when I’d suggested she hire a nurse instead she’d looked at me like I was being unreasonable. I sat in the car for a moment, my hands tight on the steering wheel, trying to get my expression under control before I went inside. This was fine, I told myself. This was temporary. Darius was recovering and Jake had asked and Brynn was just being the good person she’d always been. Nothing about this meant anything. The front door opened before I could knock and Brynn appeared, her hair pulled back messily and her clothes c

BRYNN POV I thought about it the way Seth had asked me to, honestly, with the actual intention of arriving somewhere rather than circling. I gave it the time I gave difficult things, the early mornings before the twins were awake, the last twenty minutes at night when the hotel was quiet and there was nothing left to manage. I sat with the question the way I had learned to sit with things that didn't resolve quickly, without forcing it toward an answer it wasn't ready to give. I thought about Seth, who had been beside me through every version of the past five years, who knew the full inventory of what I had survived and had never once used the knowledge as leverage. Who showed up without being asked. Who made me laugh in the particular way that didn't require anything from me, that just arrived because something was genuinely funny and we both found it funny at the same time. Who had held my hand in a hospital corridor at midnight and not said a word and given me exactly what I neede

BRYNN POVDarius started showing up personally.Not every time, not in a way that could be pointed to as a pattern if you were being generous about it, but I was not being generous about it because I was an actress and I understood the difference between behavior and motivated behavior and what I was watching had motivation all over it.The first time I assumed it was coincidence. The second time I noted it. By the fourth time he had appeared at a handoff that his assistant had previously handled without incident, I had a clear picture of what was happening and had filed it under things I was managing rather than things I was addressing, which was a category that had gotten quite full lately.He found reasons to extend every conversation.This required a certain amount of ingenuity on his part, because the conversations were ostensibly about the children, which was a subject with natural limits, and he was reaching those limits and then locating new territory with a persistence that I

Brynn’s POVThe business dinner was one of those industry events I’d learned to navigate with practiced ease, all careful networking and strategic conversations over overpriced food.I hadn’t expected Darius to be there, hadn’t seen his name on the guest list when I’d confirmed my attendance three weeks ago.But there he was across the room, commanding attention without trying, talking to investors and executives with the kind of effortless authority that came from being born into power.Our eyes met once across the crowd and something passed between us that made my stomach flip, recognition and awareness and something else I wasn’t ready to name.I looked away first, focusing on my own conversations, pretending I wasn’t hyperaware of exactly where he was at all times.The dinner wrapped up around ten, guests filtering out in clusters, calling for cars and saying polite goodbyes.I was waiting for my ride when Darius appeared at my elbow, his phone in his hand and frustration clear in

Brynn povSeth came back the next evening, showing up at my hotel room without calling first, his expression unreadable in the hallway light.I’d been expecting him, had been waiting for this conversation since he’d walked out yesterday with that careful control that told me he was holding himself together by force of will.“Can we talk?” he asked quietly.I stepped back and let him in, my stomach already knotting with dread.He didn’t sit down, didn’t move past the entryway, just stood there looking at me with an intensity that made my chest tight.Then he asked the question I’d been dreading, no preamble, no gentle lead-in.“Did something happen with Darius?”The words hung in the air between us, simple and direct and impossible to dodge.I considered lying, opened my mouth to say no, nothing happened, Cassia was manipulating footage or misinterpreting what she’d seen.Then I looked at Seth’s face and found I couldn’t do it.Couldn’t lie to this man who’d held me through my worst mo